A remarkable experience listening to New York Law School Professor of Law and Director, Institute for Information Law and Policy, Beth Simone Noveck and Cory Ondrejka, CTO at Linden Labs. Prof. Noveck aptly described Ondrejka as the creative boy wonder behind much of Second Life, the internet-based virtual world with 3 million user accounts. I was struck by her sparkling brilliance and ability to tease out strands of legal complexity with the greatest delicacy. I shared with Mr. Ondrejka the concept of Enso 2007---and Around the World in A Single Stroke entered the imagined space of the Metaverse. From bits to atoms, real and virtual spaces and places, suburban, exurban and web worlds, high fidelity avatars, avatars wearing bodies as clothing, the discussion was not bound by concrete reality. Ondrjka referenced the groundbreaking research of Stanford Prof. Jeremy Bailenson (Virtual Human Interaction Lab).

Cory Ondrjka’s comment that “innovation is created from the collision of disparate social networks” resonated with me since I have always envisioned Around the World as a project about juxtaposing worlds, creating unusual pairings, and transcending cultural and temporal boundaries both visible and invisible.

Ondrjka pointed out that much of what is built in Second Life can be created and then made to disappear very quickly as everything is ephemeral in this virtual space. It seems many worlds away from the Floating World but I wondered about the ramifications of a place with so much impermanence.